There have been a lot of news stories recently about how grain-free pet foods may be bad. The stories focus on dogs. What should families with cats know?

How are We Just Hearing About This?

The short answer is, we aren’t. This is one of those things hat has been under discussion in the veterinary community for a while. In June 2017, a letter went out from UC Davis about many golden retrievers being diagnosed with taurine-deficient dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM).

This June, an article was published by Tufts Clinical Nutrition Service blaming heart disease in dogs on grain-free diets and exotic ingredients. While much of the article was informative, the advice in the article, to stop reading the ingredients list and to feed dogs a “made by a well-known reputable company and containing standard ingredients” made some pet owners uncomfortable, especially those who knew that Purina and Hills were donors to Tufts Veterinary School.

So these warnings stayed primarily within the veterinary community until the FDA put out a statement in July that they were investigating a potential connection between diet and cases of canine heart disease. Suddenly, the media took notice, and everything from major newspapers to hometown TV news reporters took were talking about dogs and grain-free diets.

Why are You Talking About Dogs? What About Cats?

The FDA recently issued a frequently asked questions list about the investigation into the connection between diet and canine heart disease. Among the answers was this:

Prior to issuing our public notification on July 12, 2018, the FDA received sporadic reports involving 30 dogs and seven cats.

After the FDA’s previous statement talked exclusively about dogs, they suddenly mention that over 20% of the reports they had received were about cats. Should families with cats worry?

What the FDA Says About Those Cats

It seemed the only thing to do is ask the FDA what was going on and why we were only hearing about dogs. Anne Norris, with the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine explained:

FDA received one feline report in 2015 and two feline report in 2016, and those three cases encompassed seven cats total. Vet-LIRN investigated and was never able to determine the cause of illness for the cats. Diet cannot be ruled out as a factor in the feline cases, but it’s worth noting that the food that five of the cats were eating tested at normal levels for taurine. We do not know the significance of the feline reports as it relates to the canine reports at this time, but it’s something we’re keeping in mind as we investigate.

The focus of the update was on canine DCM due to the proportionally higher number of reports involving dogs. We will review feline DCM cases if they are reported to us. Since posting our public notification on July 12, 2018, we have not received any reports involving cats.

It is understandable that the FDA, like all government agencies, has to make choices about what they can investigate with their limited resources.

The point that that there have been no more reports since the public notification on July 12 is not very persuasive, considering the notification said, “The FDA encourages pet owners and veterinary professionals to report cases of DCM in dogs suspected of having a link to diet by using the electronic Safety Reporting Portal or calling their state’s FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinators.” When you encourage reports about dogs, you get reports about dogs.

The FDA doesn’t think cats are impacted as often as dogs by potential issues from ingredients in grain-free foods. Photo credit: depositphotos/gurinaleksandr

What Should Cat Families Do?

That’s the hard question, and it’s one that families with dogs have been asking a lot recently. No one has any clear answers yet.

One thing we should not do is count on the dog-related research to apply to cats. Early observations in golden retrievers show that this dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is reversible in dogs with taurine supplementation, and dogs synthesize taurine from cysteine and methionine, other amino acids in their diet. Cats can’t use other amino acids as building blocks and need to eat taurine in their diet to avoid dilated cardiomyopathy. So any outcome from the current studies may not apply to cats.

According to Anne Norris at the FDA:

The common thread seems to be legumes and/or potatoes as main ingredients in the food. Currently, it’s a correlative link, not a causative one.

If you want to avoid legumes or potatoes in your cat’s food, you need to avoid food using those as an ingredient. Kibble requires some kind of starch to hold it together, so many pet food manufactures use peas, lentils, chickpeas, or potatoes to hold grain-free kibble together. You may have better luck avoiding or minimizing the ingredients on the canned food aisle. Canned food is good for your cat’s hydration, so including it as a major component of your cat’s diet is a win either way.

You might also consider transitioning your cat to a balanced, raw diet, but keep in mind your cat can’t just eat raw meat from the grocery store. That isn’t balanced, even if it might look tasty!

The warnings about grain-free pet food have made many unsure of what to feed their pets. Photo credit: depositphotos/kuban_girl

The July notification from the FDA also noted:

Early reports from the veterinary cardiology community indicate that the dogs consistently ate these foods as their primary source of nutrition for time periods ranging from months to years.

Rotating your cat’s diet so she doesn’t eat the same food all the time might be a good precaution. It is a good practice anyhow so you have another food your know your cat will eat in case of recall or supply shortage.

This site will bring you an update if this investigation brings information relevant to cats.

There’s a lot of confusion between feline Immunodeficiency virus (FIV) and Feline AIDS. Many people aren’t sure if the terms are the same or different, and they use them interchangeably. Let’s look a little closer into when when it is correct to say a cat has FIV and when it is accurate to say they have Feline AIDS.

What are FIV and Feline AIDS?

Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a virus transmitted between cats primarily by deep bite wounds. Less often, a mother cat transmits the virus to kittens during birth or through her milk.

FIV is a feline-specific virus that can’t be transmitted to other species, so humans can’t catch it.

Stage 1 FIV: Initial infection

When a cat first catches the virus, it multiplies rapidly, and the cat’s immune system creates antibodies to try to fight it off. The cat may have a temperature or poor appetite the same way he would if she picked up any other virus and her systems was hard at work against it.

The cat’s immune system can fight off most of the virus, but part of it mutates to hide from the immune system response. When the cat’s immune system finishes doing its work on the part of the virus it can find, and the cat feels better again. At this point, the cat doesn’t seem sick at all, even though FIV is now hiding in his system.

Stage 2 FIV: Latent infection

During the second stage, the virus slowly works, attacking the cat’s immune system and ability to fight off infection. This process can take as 10 years or more, with the cat living an apparently healthy life in the meantime.

Cats who live comfortably in homes with good nutrition, vet care, and little stress often have the longest time symptom-free, and can live normal lifespans of 15 or even 20 years. There are times when people unknowingly adopt cats carrying the FIV virus and aren’t aware that the cats are even carrying it since cats can seem healthy during these years.

Cats who carry the FIV virus and live difficult, stressful lives are likely to see the virus progress faster. For example, feral cats who live without shelter or adequate nutrition could have immune systems weakened by the virus in months or a few years.

Stage 3 FIV: Immune deficiency

FIV slowly kills off the immune system until it is no longer able to fight off opportunistic infections. At that point, the cat is has a feline acquired immune deficiency, or Feline AIDS. When the cat is exposed to another disease, the cat will have no immune resources to fight it off, and that secondary disease can be fatal.

Why Making the Distinction between FIV and Feline AIDS Matters

Saying Feline AIDS isn’t accurate for all cats who carry the FIV virus. It only describes cats who are in the third stage of the illness. Generalizing that cats who test FIV positive all have Feline AIDS is like saying everyone who has cancer has stage 3 cancer.

There are thousands of adoptable cats out there carrying the FIV virus, and saying they have Feline AIDS alarms families who might otherwise be be interested in spending a happy life with them. Feline AIDS sounds like something that humans can catch, and the public, who don’t know any better, are unlikely to a adopt a pet they think might make them sick.

FIV positive cats can have longer stays in shelters because people are afraid to adopt them. Photo credit: depositphotos/Buurserstraat38

People may also be afraid of adopting a cat who might make their other cats sick. The FIV virus isn’t transmissible to other cats through casual, friendly household contact, making cats with both positive and negative FIV statuses able to live together without risk of transmission as long as the cats get along with each other and don’t fight. Fighting is when the deep bite wounds that transmit the disease happen, so if cats are friendly with, they can be great companions no matter their FIV status.

Understanding the facts about FIV helps us all understand why there is no need to say Feline AIDS to describe cats who carry the FIV virus.

When Cupcake was at the vet, she got a prescription for her runny eye.

The prescribed pills are really big. Much bigger than Cupcake will comfortably take.

So it’s up to the humans to put them into something that goes down more easily. We use gelatin capsules. Size 3 gelatin capsules are a good size for a cat to take. They manufacture special flavored gelatin capsules for pets, but we have tried them and they aren’t worth the extra cost. Cats don’t like taking them any more or less than they do the unflavored ones.

The only problem with getting the medication into a gel cap is that that big pill won’t be into that little capsule.

This means we have to cut up the pill. Before you cut up a pill, ask your vet if the medication can be cut up. Some pills have time release coatings, and the medication doesn’t perform the same way if you cut it up.

We started by cutting the pill into quarters. There are lots of pill cutters meant specifically for cutting pills, but at our house, the pill cutting tool of choice is a miniature cleaver originally meant for cheese.

Even cut into quarters, the pill won’t fit into the gelatin capsule.

So the pill must be cut into smaller and smaller pieces, until they fit inside the capsule.

Once the capsule is filled, put the top on. If it won’t push shut far enough that it feels like it will stay closed, you have put too much in a single capsule.

Now your pill is ready to give in a much smaller form factor that will go into your cat more easily.

If your cat isn’t easy to pill, a good pill shooter can make the task easier for both of you so you can get that pill far enough into your cat’s throat for her to swallow. Look for a pill shooter with a soft tip. They do a better job of holding the pill until it is time to release than the ones with hard plastic tips.

Be sure to follow up pills with a syringe of water or something to eat to be sure the gelatin capsule makes its way down the throat.

Cupcake: With a little help, I will feel all better soon. Watch out, Newton!

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Do you have a plan for what will happen if your cat has expensive health issues? I was faced with this in the past few weeks.

One Sick Cat

First, Pierre got sick. He was really sick, and he had to be hospitalized. The day he was hospitalized, the first treatment plan I signed to approve was over $800. Then the vet brought me an updated treatment plan with additional tests for $1200. The final bill for just that day while he was hospitalized at the vet on IV and running tests was over $1400. It was scary to worry about him, and also scary to know how fast we were running up bills trying to help him get better.

That wasn’t his only vet visit that week. Pierre was actually at the vet four days that week, for diagnostics, supportive treatments, and medication. Plus there were two visits to an outside pharmacy to get medicine that we could get him to take.

Another Sick Cat

About the time Pierre started feeling a little better, Cupcake stopped eating. Then she started throwing up.

There was nothing sadder than seeing Cupcake looking miserable under the kitchen table while we prepped breakfast for the cats. That’s the time of day when she would normally be “helping,” but instead she just sat under one of the kitchen chairs, and then she refused to eat. There was obviously something really wrong. So back to the vet we went.

With Cupcake, we jumped right to diagnostics to try to figure out what kind of bug the cats were transmitting. The last thing we needed was Cupcake passing this around any further. The idea of medicating Ashton when she won’t eat pill pockets is kind of terrifying, so the sick cat merry-go-round needed to stop before it got to Ashton.

That resulted in lots of medications for Cupcake’s symptoms, but frustratingly, we got no real diagnosis of the root cause of the problem. At a year old, Cupcake bounced back pretty fast. Much faster than Pierre, who is nearly 14. So she didn’t need as much help as he did. She felt better after only a couple days of medication, and she was soon trying to steal treats from Pierre while he had sub-q fluids administered at home.

After over a week without yet another cat having to visit the vet, I think we can safely say that this outbreak of whatever it is has finally left the building.

Pet Insurance

When all was said and done, between Cupcake and Pierre, we ran up $2703 in vet bills in 8 days. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that we have pet insurance. Some people think pet insurance is something you have to start when a cat is young, but that isn’t necessarily true. I enrolled Pierre when he was 12 years old, but while he was still healthy and had no major illnesses. As a result, I was able to say “do whatever you need to do for him” without wondering how I would pay for his treatment.

That’s why I have insurance. It isn’t because I expect to get every nickel back that I paid in premiums. I would rather have a cat who is so healthy that we never have to use the insurance so I “lose money” on it. For me, it’s peace of mind that I can authorize necessary treatment rather than choosing not to treat for financial reasons.

When all was said and done, insurance reimbursed roughly half of those vet bills, over $1300. I chose insurance plans for both Cupcake and Pierre with $500 deductibles, so most of what I wasn’t reimbursed was their deductibles. I could have chosen a smaller deductible when I signed them up for insurance, but I never expected they would both be sick the same week!

Vet Emergency Fund

Insurance isn’t the only way to go, of course. Even if you have insurance, it’s a good idea to set up a savings account to cover vet bills and contribute to it regularly. It takes time to accumulate savings so you should start as early as possible.

Kitten plays with coins. Image credit: depositphotos/viktoriagam

Since it takes time to accumulate savings, an unexpected veterinary bill soon after you start it can overcome the savings you have begun to collect. Young, healthy cats are your best chance to build savings against future vet bills.

Regardless of the way you prepare yourself for future vet bills, the important thing is to have a plan ahead of time. The past few weeks have proven to me that you’ll be grateful to your past self for the planning ahead when you’re in the middle of a crisis.

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There are no veterinarians here. All health-related posts are the result of research and observation, but educational information is not a substitute for visiting your veterinarian. Do not self-diagnose your cat. For more information, see our disclaimer.